Architecture of Venice (Sarah Quill)

Sarah Quill and Artstor are collaborating on a project to digitize approximately 1,000 images of Venetian architecture and architectural sculpture from Quill's photographic archive. Sarah Quill is a contemporary photographer, teacher, and scholar, who has spent the past 30 years photographing the buildings and civic life of Venice, Italy. Based in Venice and London, Quill has amassed an extensive photographic archive that documents the built environment and public spaces of the city of Venice. In reaching this agreement, Quill expressed enthusiasm for preserving her unique archive and making its contents available for educational and scholarly use within the Artstor Digital Library: "I am delighted that the archive will be associated with this important resource." The first efforts of this collaboration have already been released in Artstor; subsequent batches will be released over the coming years.

Sarah Quill's photographs have been reproduced in a number of books and articles on subjects ranging from the architecture of the Italian Renaissance to architectural conservation and cultural heritage policy. Quill also compiled photographs for her own publication, Ruskin's Venice: The Stones Revisited (2000). John Ruskin (1819-1900), writer, artist, and critic, produced a massive three-volume work, The Stones of Venice (1851-1853), which surveyed the buildings of Venice and remains one of the most influential works on Venetian art and architecture ever written. In 2000, to mark the centenary of Ruskin's death, Quill published an illustrated guide to The Stones of Venice, which linked Ruskin's descriptions with contemporary photographs of the referenced architecture and sculpture. Quill's photographs for Ruskin's Venice: The Stones Revisted focused on the exteriors of Venetian monuments, what can be seen from the street or from the water without entering the buildings. As such, these images provide a visual record of how Venice's architecture has survived or altered since the publication of Ruskin's work in the 19th century.